Ashes in My Mouth, Sand in My Shoes, is a book of stories featuring Per Petterson’s recurring character Arvid Jansen as a young boy. Published in 1987, it wasn’t translated into English until 2013. I’ve eagerly followed Mr. Petterson’s career since reading Out Stealing Horses almost fifteen years ago. While these stories have some of the same simple beauty as his later works, it is clear from the outset that this work is that of a writer learning his craft. Some of the stories, there are ten in all, nearly have the self-contained prose and polish of, say, In The Wake or It’s Fine By Me. A few fall a little flat, in my opinion, but it is interesting still to see some of the building blocks of Arvid’s life and Petterson’s writing skill.
Some of the things that Arvid experiences are similar to what Petterson himself has endured (see the ferryboat tragedy that claimed his mother, father, brother and nephew https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Scandinavian_Star) in his own life. Petterson has said in interviews, “He’s not my alter ego, he’s my stunt man. Things happen to him that could have happened to me, but didn’t. He has my mentality.” The personal-yet-removed nature of the Arvid books and stories give an added dimension the the interior life of the character.
Here, though, Arvid is a young boy living in the suburbs of Oslo. His father proudly works in a shoe factory, but when the industry goes south, he is forced to move around and finally leave the profession altogether. When he gets a job in a toothbrush factory alongside his brother Rolf, it is a real blow to his ego, and Arvid senses this and begins to see his father as a fallible human, not just the comforting broad back clad in a blue tee shirt, bending over his craft. All of these stories give us a boy coming to terms with the world, his place in it and, perhaps, what it is to be an adult.
I enjoyed experiencing a young writer at the cusp of a distinguished career and am glad to have finally been able to read these stories and get some deeper background into the character of Arvid.
